Image by Darcy Dubose via Instagram
This week was confusing, exhausting, and completely enraging, as much of the last seven months has been, to be honest. To any readers in Spain, my thoughts are with you. My family took a quick impromptu trip out to the beach for a bit of mental self-care, so I’m a bit late with my Friday links this week. We really needed the time away, even if it was a super quick trip.
When it comes to recent events here at home, I’m still filled with anger at our president’s response to the horrific events in Charlottesville. This isn’t about politics for me. Yes, I am a political person with strong political beliefs, but this isn’t about party affiliation. This is about basic human decency and right and wrong. White supremacists are wrong. Neo-Nazis are wrong. Good people just don’t find themselves “accidentally” marching with people wearing swastikas and shouting hateful, racist speech. If you show up at a rally and are surprised to see people carrying swastikas, you walk away. When one choice involves Nazis and white supremacists, you choose the other side. Everything else is irrelevant.
This is also deeply personal for me. I’m a Jewish American. My grandfather and great-uncle fought against Nazis and their hateful beliefs in WWII. I cannot support a president who gives safe space to those same beliefs and hate groups.
We have a long way to go towards resolving the deeply rooted issues of racism and bigotry in our country, but in the meantime the best thing we can do is to educate ourselves, teach tolerance and empathy to our children, speak out against hateful ideologies, and deny hate groups the space to fester and grow. I’ll continue to speak up against racism, religious intolerance, and bigotry – and I hope you will, too. Silence speaks volumes in situations like these.
In lieu of my usual weekend links, I’ll leave you with a few videos, articles, and resources that I’ve found helpful this week:
If you have any doubt about what is at stake here, watch this video report by Vice News about the events in Charlottesville (VICE)
This video was released in 1947 to help Americans recognize Fascist rhetoric at home – the similarities with modern day Trump rhetoric are astounding (Washington Post)
Why words matter when we talk about what happened at Charlottesville (Man Repeller)
Nine longread articles on how we got to Charlottesville (the synopses are worth reading if you only have a few minutes – Longreads)
10 Ways to Fight Hate in Your Community (Southern Law Poverty Center)
How to teach tolerance (Tolerance.org)
Raising Race-Conscious Children (Cup of Jo)
How past U.S. presidents exercised moral leadership, from Lincoln to Kennedy to George W. Bush to Obama (NPR)
The week when Trump resigned (The New York Times Editorial)